tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/15th-century-89073/articles15th century – The Conversation2023-09-22T13:15:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107442023-09-22T13:15:46Z2023-09-22T13:15:46ZAndrey Rublev has been called the ‘greatest Russian artist who ever lived’ – but one of his most famous works is at risk under Putin<p>Andrey Rublev (or Rublyov – nobody is sure how his name was pronounced) <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/the-byzantine-commonwealth-eastern-europe-5001453-by-dimitri-obolensky-history-of-civilization-series-london-weidenfeld-and-nicolson-1971-xiv-445-p-400-new-york-praeger-publishers-1971-1500/D37C15C58DC899000E28AA07D693AEA1">has been described as</a> “the greatest Russian artist who ever lived”, whose work had “a clarity of composition and suave tranquillity of mood peculiarly his own”. </p>
<p>In May 2023, it was announced that under Putin, one of Rublev’s most famous works was to be removed from its restoration team and donated to the Russian Orthodox Church. This has prompted concerns about the conservation of his work.<br>
My new book <a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/andrey-rublev">Andrey Rublev: The Artist and His World</a> is an overview of the master medieval Russian painter. Rublev, active around 1400 in and near Moscow, was a monk and painter of icons, frescoes and (possibly) manuscripts in the tradition of the Orthodox Church. </p>
<p>He was highly regarded in his lifetime and for at least a century thereafter. He is mentioned in the proceedings of the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Moscow_Stoglav_hundred_Chapters_Chur.html?id=4RgsAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">Council of the 100 Chapters</a> in 1551 (a major council ordering the practices of the Russian Church) and in <a href="http://www.nostalghia.com/TheTopics/RublovDocumentation.html">Tale of the Holy Icon Painters</a> in the 17th century.</p>
<p>He is generally thought to have been born in the 1360s. He must have taken monastic orders sometime before 1405, when he was part of a team painting the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Cathedral-of-the-Annunciation">Kremlin Annunciation Cathedral</a>. He spent his last years in the relatively small <a href="https://orthodoxwiki.org/Andronikov_Monastery_(Moscow)">Andronikov Monastery</a> on the edge of Moscow (where <a href="https://all-andorra.com/andronikov-monastery/">a museum</a> is now dedicated to him). A gravestone recording his death on January 29 1430 was found in the 18th century. It has since been lost.</p>
<p>The beautiful cathedral of the <a href="https://www.inyourpocket.com/moscow/spaso-andronikov-monastery_37918v">Andronikov Monastery</a>, now the oldest standing building in Moscow (though damaged in Napoleon’s invasion and fire of 1812), dates from the late 1420s. I believe, though it can’t be proved, that Rublev had a hand in its construction. He certainly did in its painting. As I write <a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/andrey-rublev">in my book</a>, we know little or nothing about the beginnings of Rublev’s life or career.</p>
<h2>Searching for Rublev</h2>
<p>Any search for Rublev must begin with the icon known as the Old Testament Trinity, properly known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(Andrei_Rublev)#/media/File:Angelsatmamre-trinity-rublev-1410.jpg">Hospitality of Abraham</a>. It stood prominently for centuries in the small cathedral of the <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/21/russias-trinity-icon-to-stay-at-moscows-christ-the-savior-cathedral-for-month-longer">Trinity Monastery</a> in hilly, forested country approximately 70kms northeast of Moscow.</p>
<p>This monastery had been founded in the previous century by the hermit and spiritual leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Sergius-I">Sergius</a>, who was later canonised and considered the patron saint of Russia. It stood above the disputes of princes as a common spiritual centre. The icon was painted in memory of Sergius, a symbolic overcoming of enmity in a fractious land (still under Tartar rule).</p>
<p>Three elegant figures are seated round a plain table. They are neither evidently young nor old, male nor female, but are winged and haloed. They are angels, the figures who appeared to Abraham and Sarah, as recounted in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2018&version=NIV">Genesis 18</a>. </p>
<p>They are God’s messengers and deliver the news that, though elderly, Abraham and Sarah will have a son named Isaac. These three figures were taken as symbolic of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit</p>
<p>From the traditional scene, Rublev entirely omits Abraham and Sarah, but includes three symbolic items behind the wings – house, tree and mountain. All this has been apparent only since 1919, when the icon had its first proper cleaning. Until then the painting was obscured, first, by darkening of its varnish, then by the elaborate metal casing fitted over it by subsequent tsars. </p>
<p>Since then, historians have been astounded by the rhythm and poise of the figures, their symbolic meaning and the brilliant colouration based on blood-red and ultramarine blue. Soviet art historian M. Alpatov <a href="https://biblio.sg/book/art-treasures-russia-alpatov-m-w/d/262969929">wrote</a>: “In the history of the arts, there is no other one work that, to the same extent as the Trinity, embodies the best spiritual forces of an entire nation.”</p>
<h2>What we know about Rublev’s art</h2>
<p>Beyond this icon, what did Rublev definitely paint? In 1408, with his fellow monk Daniil, he worked on the great <a href="https://catholicshrinebasilica.com/dormition-cathedral-vladimir-russia/">Cathedral of the Dormition</a> in Vladimir, considered the mother church of middle Russia. Its frescoes are in poor condition, but still show Rublev as an artist of great verve. Though the Last Judgement is represented, there are no scenes of hell.</p>
<p>Beyond these, three probable Rublev icons were found in a woodshed in Zvenigorod, west of Moscow, with links to the Trinity Monastery. The icon of St Michael is so like the Trinity angels that it is usually taken as from the same hand. Around 1400 a series of fine gospel books was made for the main Moscow cathedrals. </p>
<p>Among them was the <a href="https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/andrei-rublev-alpatov-pub-1972-1779587820">Khitrovo Book</a>, a work of a quality that leads me to suspect Rublev’s work. Rublev’s final project, small decorative window-splays in the <a href="https://www.inyourpocket.com/moscow/spaso-andronikov-monastery_37918v">Andronikov Monastery</a> is still intact.</p>
<p>The Trinity icon was moved to the <a href="https://www.tretyakovgallerymagazine.com/articles/%E2%84%963-2013-40/andrei-rublev-image-holy-trinity">Tretyakov Gallery</a> in the 1920s, and – considerably battered, as it was – has been carefully studied, restored and displayed, latterly in an air-conditioned capsule. </p>
<p>So things remained, until in May 2023, when <a href="https://anglican.ink/2023/05/16/putin-returns-andrey-rublevs-icon-the-holy-trinity-to-the-russian-orthodox-church/">President Vladimir Putin announced</a> that it would be donated to the Russian Orthodox Church, in time for Trinity Sunday (June 4). The restoration team was outraged in view of its fragility – they had no guarantee that the work would be protected once it left their care – but had to submit. </p>
<p>Why should Putin behave in this way? To keep his ally, Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox church, on side? To show that, as boss, he can dispose of valuable possessions? Or (most likely) because he needs that icon’s “help” in his war? Rublev’s great masterpiece went, apparently unprotected, to the modern <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/06/21/russias-trinity-icon-to-stay-at-moscows-christ-the-savior-cathedral-for-month-longer">Christ the Saviour Cathedral</a> in Moscow.</p>
<p>However, to the surprise of visitors, the icon was temporarily spirited away from the cathedral in late July, so that a different, non-Tretyakov restoration team could work on it. It seems the journey of this masterpiece isn’t yet over.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robin Milner-Gulland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rublev, active around 1400 in and near Moscow, was a monk and painter of icons, frescoes and (possibly) manuscripts in the tradition of the Orthodox ChurchRobin Milner-Gulland, Emeritus Professor of Russian, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1749842022-02-14T11:50:47Z2022-02-14T11:50:47ZHow we made a video game based on medieval records<p>The year is 1498. The town of Aberdeen in north-east Scotland has fallen prey to a “strange sickness” that is the deadly <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20503689/">plague</a>. Disease is spreading in Europe, and people are afraid, but how can the sickness be stopped? </p>
<p>An aspiring young councillor called Robert Collison decides he must devise a way to protect the town, persuade the local governors to adopt his strategies and prevent more deaths. Can you help him succeed in slowing the strange pandemic that threatens to engulf the region?</p>
<p>This is the premise of a video game we created recently called Strange Sickness. But we are not computer game experts or designers: we are historians who based the game on our collaborative <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/aro">research</a> into Aberdeen’s rich historical archive of medieval <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/projects/aberdeen-burgh-records-project-97.php">burgh records</a>. </p>
<p>Setting up this experiment in merging historical records with digital storytelling, we enlisted the help of a video game designer and an artist. We learned a lot about computer games and the gaming industry, but most of all, we wanted to show that historians can offer a different type of authenticity than that marketed by popular video games seeking to transport people into recreations of the past.</p>
<p>Much of the conversation around popular historical games, such as <a href="https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/assassins-creed">Assassin’s Creed</a> and <a href="https://www.callofduty.com/uk/en/">Call of Duty</a>, is about issues of <a href="https://theconversation.com/even-in-the-colourful-world-of-video-games-most-players-demand-historical-accuracy-172307">accuracy and authenticity</a>. These games present a marketable illusion of being transported into a facsimile of the past – a facsimile which is impossible.</p>
<p>Of course we could say that of all ways of presenting history. None can recover the past, only interpret it through surviving sources. The difference with games is their promise of interactivity and immersion, to transport the player from the everyday into another world which they can shape through their choices and actions.</p>
<p>Often the approach to accuracy in games is a little ridiculous. Call of Duty games set in WWII emphasise the historical accuracy of details such as <a href="https://www.thegamer.com/call-of-duty-things-historically-accurate/">weapon design</a> while players navigate through Hollywood-style set pieces and kill hundreds of enemies. It is a peculiar form of accuracy which recreates equipment in exacting detail while allowing players, like ultra-violent superheroes, to transcend the historical setting of WWII. </p>
<p>History is not a window into the past, but something made by people looking at the past through whatever evidence survives. Rather than hiding this process behind a distracting – and potentially harmful – veneer of claims to historical accuracy, we wanted historical sources and the historian’s research process to be front and centre in Strange Sickness. We aimed for the game, as a form of history, to be perceived as our creation as historians.</p>
<p>We believed this would fit well with the culture of independent game development, with its focus on games made by smaller teams. This allows a greater focus on the style and authorship of individual creators than is normally possible in big-budget games made by huge teams of people.</p>
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<h2>Game on</h2>
<p>We approached the development process with the goal of bringing players face-to-face with historical sources, rare in video games. Working with game designer Katharine Neil and artist Alana Bell, our immediate focus had to be on the practicalities of getting the game made.</p>
<p>With her experience in the games industry to the project, Katharine helped shape our ideas in relation to the mechanics, characters, locations and themes that make a narrative game work. In conversations with Alana we identified the key historical criteria for the game’s visuals while leaving space for creative freedom and the demands of the game’s design.</p>
<p>Some of our original ideas had to go. For instance, the early idea to have all text in the game linked back to an explanation of its historical provenance proved unworkable from both a technical and game design standpoint.</p>
<p>But the foundation of our approach remained. The game that emerged kept historical sources at its core. It emphasised history as something authored rather than something simply found and revealed. To offer transparency on the game’s adaptation of historical materials we created a separate <a href="https://strangesickness.com/">game website</a>, linked at the start and end of the game. This provides a historian’s commentary about how key elements of the game were adapted from historical evidence, with links to primary and secondary sources online.</p>
<p>This offers a clear pathway from the game to the underlying research and sources for players who choose to follow it. Another way to emphasise how history is created is depicted within the game itself, where the town clerk writes down what ultimately become the <a href="https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/aberdeen-city-and-aberdeenshire-archives/collaborative-projects#1868">records which survive today</a> in Aberdeen’s city archives.</p>
<p>For us, as long as the game offered a clear link to historical research and sources, emphasising the authored nature of history, we felt free to develop a fictionalised narrative and work to the needs of game design.</p>
<p>Presenting history in this way – as a transparent process of construction from the traces of the past – is more authentic than any attempt to create or claim a facsimile of the past, no matter how much time, money and explosions are involved.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174984/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>At the University of Aberdeen William Hepburn works on a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a director of Common Profyt Games Ltd.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>At the University of Aberdeen Jackson Armstrong receives research funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is a director of Common Profyt Games Ltd.</span></em></p>Authentic use of history in games is not about claims to accuracy, but about transparency.William Hepburn, Research Fellow, Department of Divinity, History, Philosophy & Art History, University of AberdeenJackson Armstrong, Senior Lecturer in History, University of AberdeenLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1507772021-01-05T17:33:57Z2021-01-05T17:33:57ZHow a lost manuscript revealed the first poets of Italian literature<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375154/original/file-20201215-13-bwqaym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C331%2C4642%2C4410&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Six Tuscan Poets by Giorgio Vasari, 1544. Dante Alighieri,
Giovanni Boccaccio, Petrarch, Cino da Pistoia, Guittone d'Arezzo and Guido Cavalcanti are depicted in the oil painting.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giorgio_Vasari_-_Six_Tuscan_Poets_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia/MIA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Imagine a world where we knew the name of Homer, but the poetry of The Odyssey was lost to us. That was the world of the early Italian Renaissance during the second half of the 15th century.</p>
<p>Many people knew the names of some early poets of Italian literature – those who were active during the 13th century. But they could not read their poems because they had not been printed and were not circulating in manuscripts.</p>
<p>Then, in around 1477 the de facto sovereign of Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici – “the Magnificent” – commissioned the creation of an anthology of rare early Italian poetry to be sent to Federico d’Aragona, son of the king of Naples.</p>
<p>The luxurious manuscript became one of Federico’s most prized possessions. It was exhibited to and coveted by patricians and intellectuals for half a century – until its disappearance in the early 16th century. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An ornate colour photograph of a manuscript from 1476." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375165/original/file-20201215-19-dm3249.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375165/original/file-20201215-19-dm3249.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375165/original/file-20201215-19-dm3249.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375165/original/file-20201215-19-dm3249.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375165/original/file-20201215-19-dm3249.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375165/original/file-20201215-19-dm3249.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375165/original/file-20201215-19-dm3249.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1206&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A page from another manuscript of vernacular poetry commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1476.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b105325942/f6.item?lang=EN#">Gallica/Bibliothèque nationale de France</a></span>
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<p>But it did not disappear completely. The interest aroused by this manuscript generated a paper trail of letters, partial copies and other materials which I, <a href="http://www.lestudium-ias.com/system/files/camboni_lestudiumjournal_2017_4.pdf">along with other researchers</a>, have <a href="https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/?f%5Bf_contributors__name%5D%5B%5D=Camboni,%20M">managed to piece together</a>. These documents allow us to reconstruct not only the trajectory of the manuscript through different courts in Europe, but – crucially – what works it may have contained.</p>
<h2>Who were the vernacular poets?</h2>
<p>Vernacular literature – that is, literature written in the language normally spoken by the people – only had a marginal role during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The “real” culture was Latin. This meant that interest in the early poets who wrote in the Italian vernacular was limited – until the flourishing of the Italian language in the age of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lorenzo-de-Medici">Lorenzo de’ Medici</a>.</p>
<p>One of these 13th-century poets, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cino-da-Pistoia">Cino da Pistoia</a>, was loved and celebrated by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dante-Alighieri">Dante Alighieri</a> in his treatise on the art of poetry, “De vulgari eloquentia”. Dante said of his contemporary Cino:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There are a few, I feel, who have understood the excellence of the vernacular: these include Guido, Lapo … and Cino, from Pistoia, whom I place unworthily here at the end, moved by a consideration that is far from unworthy.</p>
</blockquote>
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<img alt="A black and white portrait of Cino." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375393/original/file-20201216-15-1mjinv2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375393/original/file-20201216-15-1mjinv2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375393/original/file-20201216-15-1mjinv2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375393/original/file-20201216-15-1mjinv2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375393/original/file-20201216-15-1mjinv2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375393/original/file-20201216-15-1mjinv2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375393/original/file-20201216-15-1mjinv2.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing of Cino da Pistoia from the 1808 book, Memorie della vita de Messer Cino da Pistoja by Sebastiano Ciampi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cino-da-Pistoia">Britannica.com</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guido-Cavalcanti">Guido Cavalcanti</a> was another love poet. He and Dante were best friends and Dante regarded Cavalcanti as an authority on poetry. Cavalcanti is mentioned in Dante’s early poetry collection, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/La-Vita-nuova">the Vita nova</a>. </p>
<p>The whole work is addressed to Cavalcanti and Dante even implies that he is writing in Italian because of him. But despite Dante’s popularity, even the Vita nova was hard to get hold of before 1576 when it was printed for the first time.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guittone-dArezzo">Guittone d'Arezzo</a> was another highly regarded poet. He started as a love poet before becoming the most important author (before Dante) writing on moral and political themes.</p>
<h2>The Raccolta Aragonese</h2>
<p>The collection of Tuscan poetry sent to Federico d’Aragona by Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1477 contained Dante’s Vita nova, as well as rare poems recovered from ancient manuscripts by Cino, Guittone, Cavalcanti and many others. The collection was opened by a letter signed by Lorenzo himself.</p>
<p>The manuscript was later named after its owner and became the Raccolta Aragonese (“the Aragon collection”). It became one of Federico’s most prized possessions and the object of widespread interest and curiosity. </p>
<p>Federico took it with him when he travelled to Rome at the end of 1492 to swear allegiance to the Borgia Pope <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-VI">Alexander VI</a>. During this trip, he showed it to the scholar Paolo Cortesi, who immediately wrote to Piero de’ Medici – the son of the recently deceased Lorenzo the Magnificent. In this letter, Cortesi recounts that he had been shown a manuscript with poems by early vernacular poets, chiefly Cino and Guittone. The excitement is palpable: Cortesi is able to read poems by these authors whose names he had only ever heard mentioned before.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A coin bearing the image of Federico d'Aragona" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375159/original/file-20201215-24-pe4re2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375159/original/file-20201215-24-pe4re2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375159/original/file-20201215-24-pe4re2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375159/original/file-20201215-24-pe4re2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375159/original/file-20201215-24-pe4re2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375159/original/file-20201215-24-pe4re2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375159/original/file-20201215-24-pe4re2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">King Federico of Naples (1451-1504) portrayed on a Francesco di Giorgio medal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Francesco_di_giorgio_martini,_medaglia_di_don_federigo_d%27aragona.JPG">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such was the interest in these lost poets that partial copies of the Raccolta started to circulate. The first one was probably made by someone in Federico’s inner circle before he became King of Naples in 1496. News about his collection of rare early Italian poems was spreading.</p>
<h2>The widow queen and the duchess</h2>
<p>Federico was the last sovereign of his dynasty. He lost his throne when Louis XII of France <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Italian-Wars">invaded Italy</a>. When he left Naples in the summer of 1501, Federico took the books of the royal library with him. He later had to sell part of them to sustain himself and his followers during his exile in France. But the Raccolta Aragonese was not sold and after his death in 1504 it was passed on to his widow, Isabella del Balzo.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An oil painting of Isabella d'Este" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375397/original/file-20201216-19-tv1b0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375397/original/file-20201216-19-tv1b0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375397/original/file-20201216-19-tv1b0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375397/original/file-20201216-19-tv1b0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=970&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375397/original/file-20201216-19-tv1b0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375397/original/file-20201216-19-tv1b0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375397/original/file-20201216-19-tv1b0r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1219&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Isabella d'Este by Titian (circa 1534-1536).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tizian_056.jpg">Wikimedia/KunsthistorischesMuseum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The widow queen then lent the collection to Isabella d'Este, the Duchess of Mantua, in northern Italy, in 1512. She kept it for two months and, even though in her letters she promised not to leave it in other people’s hands, it is likely that she commissioned a complete copy which led to further partial copies being made.</p>
<p>Even though the transmission of these copies was in manuscript form – and so not widespread – several Renaissance intellectuals managed to read these “lost” works and were influenced by them in their attempts to reconstruct the history of Italian literature. </p>
<p>The real game-changer came in 1527 when a printed collection of vernacular poetry finally took the works of masters like Cino, Guittone and Cavalcanti to a much wider audience. This is when they stopped being obscure and arcane authors and finally took their place in the canon of Italian literature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150777/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Clotilde Camboni receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 840772</span></em></p>The history of Italian literature cannot be understood without the vernacular poets. But their works were largely unknown until Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’ sent a gift to the Prince of Naples.Maria Clotilde Camboni, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1408092020-07-02T12:26:45Z2020-07-02T12:26:45ZThe invention of satanic witchcraft by medieval authorities was initially met with skepticism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344310/original/file-20200626-104484-1dbzjs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3344%2C2773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Woodcut, circa 1400. A witch, a demon and a warlock fly toward a peasant woman.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/circa-1400-a-witch-a-demon-and-a-warlock-fly-towards-a-news-photo/51240919">Hulton Archive /Handout via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a midsummer day in 1438, a young man from the north shore of Lake Geneva presented himself to the local church inquisitor. He had a confession to make. Five years earlier, his father had forced him to join a satanic cult of witches. They had flown at night on a small black horse to join more than a hundred people gathered in a meadow. The devil was there too, in the form of a black cat. The witches knelt before him, worshiped him and kissed his posterior.</p>
<p>The young man’s father had already been executed as a witch. It’s likely he was trying to secure a lighter punishment by voluntarily telling inquisitors what they wanted to hear.</p>
<p>The Middle Ages, A.D. 500-1500, have a reputation for both heartless cruelty and hopeless credulity. People commonly believed in all kinds of magic, monsters and <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15568.html">fairies</a>. But it wasn’t until the 15th century that the idea of organized satanic witchcraft took hold. As a historian who <a href="https://history.iastate.edu/directory/michael-bailey/">studies medieval magic</a>, I’m fascinated by how a coterie of church and state authorities conspired to develop and promote this new concept of witchcraft for their own purposes.</p>
<h2>Early medieval attitudes about witchcraft</h2>
<p>Belief in witches, in the sense of wicked people performing harmful magic, had existed in Europe since before the Greeks and Romans. In the early part of the Middle Ages, authorities were largely unconcerned about it. </p>
<p><a href="https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/Witches442/PaganTraces.html">A church document</a> from the early 10th century proclaimed that “sorcery and witchcraft” might be real, but the idea that groups of witches flew together with demons through the night was a delusion. </p>
<p>Things began to change in the 12th and 13th centuries, ironically because educated elites in Europe were becoming more sophisticated.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344356/original/file-20200626-104489-1x8hg5c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henricus de Alemannia lecturing students at the University of Bologna in the second half of the 14th century – one of the earliest illustrations of a medieval university classroom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laurentius_de_Voltolina_001.jpg">Laurentius de Voltolina/Kupferstichkabinett Berlin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Universities were being founded, and scholars in Western Europe began to pore over ancient texts as well as learned writings from the Muslim world. Some of these presented complex <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-08213-4.html">systems of magic</a> that claimed to draw on astral forces or conjure powerful spirits. Gradually, these ideas began to gain intellectual clout.</p>
<p>Ordinary people – the kind who eventually got accused of being witches – didn’t perform elaborate rites from books. They gathered herbs, brewed potions, maybe said a short spell, as they had for generations. And they did so for all sorts of reasons – perhaps to harm someone they disliked, but more often to <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/popular-magic-cunning-folk-in-english-history-9780826442796/">heal or protect</a> others. Such practices were important in a world with only rudimentary forms of medical care.</p>
<p>Christian authorities had previously dismissed this kind of magic as empty superstition. Now they took all magic much more seriously. They began to believe simple spells worked by summoning demons, which meant anyone who performed them secretly worshiped demons. </p>
<h2>Inventing satanic witchcraft</h2>
<p>In the 1430s, a small group of writers in Central Europe – church inquisitors, theologians, lay magistrates and even one historian – began to describe horrific assemblies where witches gathered and worshiped demons, had orgies, ate murdered babies and performed other abominable acts. Whether any of these authors ever met each other is unclear, but they all described groups of witches supposedly active in a zone around the western Alps. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p>
<p>The reason for this development may have been purely practical. Church inquisitors, active against religious heretics since the 13th century, and some secular courts were looking to expand their jurisdictions. Having a new and particularly horrible crime to prosecute might have struck them as useful.</p>
<p>I just translated a number of these early texts for a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/43358448/Origins_of_the_Witches_Sabbath">forthcoming book</a> and was struck by how worried the authors were about readers not believing them. One fretted that his accounts would be “disparaged” by those who “think themselves learned.” Another feared that “simple folk” would refuse to believe the “fragile sex” would engage in such terrible practices.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520320574/european-witch-trials">Trial records</a> show it was a hard sell. Most people remained concerned with harmful magic – witches causing illness or withering crops. They didn’t much care about secret satanic gatherings.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344298/original/file-20200626-104499-4etmz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1068&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The handbook for detecting and persecuting witches in the Middle Ages, ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ or ‘Hammer of Witches.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J._Sprenger_and_H._Institutoris,_Malleus_maleficarum._Wellcome_L0000980.jpg">Wellcome Images/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1486, clergyman Heinrich Kramer published the most widely circulated medieval text about organized witchcraft, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/literature/european-literature/hammer-witches-complete-translation-malleus-maleficarum?format=PB&isbn=9780521747875">Malleus Maleficarum</a> (Hammer of Witches). But many people didn’t believe him. When he tried to start a witch hunt in Innsbruck, Austria, he was kicked out by the local bishop, who accused him of <a href="https://www.dtv.de/buch/heinrich-kramer-guenter-jerouschek-wolfgang-behringer-der-hexenhammer-30780/">being senile</a>. </p>
<h2>Witch hunts</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, the fear of satanic witchcraft grew. The 15th century seems to have provided ideal soil for this new idea to take root. </p>
<p>Europe was recovering from <a href="https://cornellup.degruyter.com/view/title/568227">several crises</a>: plague, wars and a split in the church between two, and then three, competing popes. Beginning in the 1450s, the printing press made it easier for new ideas to spread. Even prior to the Protestant Reformation, religious reform was in the air. As I explored in an <a href="http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-02225-3.html">earlier book</a>, reformers used the idea of a diabolical conspiracy bent on corrupting Christianity as a boogeyman in their call for spiritual renewal.</p>
<p>Over time, more people came to accept this new idea. Church and state authorities kept telling them it was real. Still, many also kept relying on local “witches” for magical healing and protection.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=828&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/344300/original/file-20200626-104484-6oipp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1041&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The execution of alleged witches in Central Europe, 1587.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Wickiana3.jpg">Zurich Central Library/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The history of witchcraft can be quite grim. From the 1400s through the 1700s, authorities in Western Europe <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Witch-Hunt-in-Early-Modern-Europe-4th-Edition/Levack/p/book/9781138808102?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9s_H7OuV6gIVi8DACh3paAtCEAAYASAAEgLcLvD_BwE">executed around 50,000 people, mostly women,</a> for witchcraft. The worst witch hunts could claim hundreds of victims at a time. With 20 dead, colonial America’s largest hunt at Salem was moderate by comparison. </p>
<p>Salem, in 1692, marked the end of witch hunts in New England. In Europe, too, skepticism would eventually prevail. It’s worth remembering, though, that at the beginning, authorities had to work hard to convince others such malevolence was real.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140809/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael D. Bailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The idea of organized satanic witchcraft was invented in 15th-century Europe by church and state authorities, who at first had a hard time convincing regular folks it was real.Michael D. Bailey, Professor of History, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.